absolution

Recently, a number of people from my distant past have contacted me via Facebook. While all of these people have been Decent Human Beings, following links of friends-of-friends and whatnot yielded many people I'd rather forget. But with time and distance on my side, it's a bit easier to see why I was so miserable growing up: I went to school with some absolutely dreadful excuses for human beings. Those of you who read this who grew up with me know exactly what I'm talking about: we were surrounded by truly cruel, terrible children/adolescents with disgusting values systems. The Future Greek System Cookie Cutter Whores (male and female alike). The dim, shallow twats who weren't content to just be dim and shallow themselves but found it necessary to belittle and berate anything that didn't fit neatly into the box. God forbid you wore the wrong clothes or "acted smart" or thought independently. Every time I opened my mouth, they sneered and rolled their eyes and told me to shut it. Maybe I would have come out less scathed had I listened, but to me that was surrender, so I fought back tooth and nail. I fought just. so. hard. to be true to myself while they told me I was annoying and stupid and why did I have to be "like that" all the time and shut up, you fucking freak. I was aware of my parents' impotence by the time I was 7. Every time they tried to help (talking to the teachers or other parents or giving me advice on how to handle mean little children) it got worse. No wonder I didn't trust them with anything, taking the burden of my own pain completely on my own shoulders. No wonder I'm so inclined towards loner-ism in my sad, hurt, self-hating way. I learned very young that people were either mean or useless. It was the perfect recipe for a hard, thin outer shell and complete mush on the inside.
Self-help gurus and therapists are always saying to take responsibility for your own life and misery, but maybe my problem is that I've been taking that responsibility for the better part of 25 years when in fact it's an undeserved burden. Nobody deserves to be treated the way I was treated, and while I was fighting and fighting and fighting, I never accepted the fact that I was actually a victim. I hate the victim mentality, but at the same time, if I never recognize that they injured me deeply, I can never tend to my wounds. And I've been out of the thick of the shit for seven years now and I'm clearly not yet healed. I'm convinced people don't like me or shouldn't like me. I have a terrible time trusting people and it takes very little for them to hurt me a whole lot. And then I'm perpetually single because Why would anyone love me when I am so undeserving of love? The shit runs deep and it hurts it hurts it hurts. But no child deserves the mistreatment and burden I carried. It wasn't my fault. These were bad people doing bad things and I didn't deserve them. It wasn't my fault. It isn't my fault. My pain is justified and real and not my fault.